Is Not Doing vs Not Having to Do
Fleeting- see,
When I tell to my team that we don’t actually do the method X, I generally get the answer that “It is not important not to do X by the book, my method works well”.
I think this is a straw man fallacy, unconsciously used to reduce the cognitive dissonance “I do a good method” vs “Someone criticize something about my method” with minimization.
In such situation, my point is almost never about the merit of the method this person uses. At that point, I have no clear opinion about whether the method is good or bad.
Its like keeping the label X on the used method would let it keep the positive aura about X.
See is it ok to ignore the scrum guide?
In short, to me, it’s perfectly ok not to do X, just don’t call what you do X.
The conversation then slips from “I am not actually doing X” to “I am not forced to do X”. I am more interested in thinking about the former than the later.
What puzzles me in this situation, is that the person claims to do X, as if it was needed for per to feel safe. And even if per explicitly (at that time) indicates that “Well, maybe I’m not doing it, but I don’t have to, right?”, per still ends saying a few days later that “I am doing X”.
I think this puts me in cognitive dissonance, between “Per say that per does X” vs “Per does not do X” and “Per say that per knows about it” vs “Per still claims per does it”.
I think that using the correct wording helps understanding and its important to me that people are intellectually honest about what they pretend doing.
I also think that per initially wants to do X, but progressively slips from it. Instead of realizing that per does not eventually do X, per prefers to convince perself that per still does X.
Festinger argued that some people would inevitably resolve dissonance by blindly believing whatever they wanted to believe